Mexican drug lord and prison escape artist Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been extradited to the United States to stand trial in Brooklyn on drug trafficking and murder conspiracy charges, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

“He is in the air,” a U.S. official said, confirming an account by the Mexican government that it was sending Guzman to face federal prosecution in the United States.

Brooklyn has long been seen as the likely destination for Guzman, and federal prosecutors there last year revised an indictment to drop charges that would make the accused drug lord eligible for the death penalty, which had been a sticking point in negotiations between the U.S. and Mexico.

He is charged in six separate indictments throughout the United States, according to the Justice Department statement.

The extradition comes on President Obama’s last full day in office, before Donald Trump is sworn in Friday.

Guzman, who heads the Sinaloa drug cartel, has sometimes been called the world's wealthiest and most powerful drug trafficker.

In January 2001, he left a high-security Mexican prison, reportedly with help from bribed prison staff.

He ran his expanding drug business as a fugitive for the next 13 years before being captured again in February 2014.

Then in July 2015, he managed to escape from the Altiplano prison outside the capital. Authorities had labeled the prison escape-proof. He used a mile-long tunnel connected to the shower stall in his cell.

He was recaptured last January in the Pacific coastal city of Los Mochis and returned to Altiplano.

In May, he was transferred to another maximum-security prison, Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 9, in the border city of Juarez.